CHAPTER 1
No sooner do I arrive in Kauai than I immediately assault a stranger with my luggage.
To be fair, the luggage starts it. The vinyl monstrosity shoots past me on the carousel like it’s trying to escape our relationship, and I lunge. So does someone else. My hand closes on the handle at the exact same second a larger, warmer hand does, and now I’m pressed against six feet of solid muscle and a scent that can only be described as ocean plus trouble.
“Excuse me,” the mountain says, his voice low enough to vibrate the carousel.
“Excused,” I squeak, not moving an inch.
We tug in opposite directions. The suitcase jerks free, momentum yanks me backward and him forward, and suddenly I’m plastered against a chest that feels suspiciously like a steel door. My thigh catches his hip. His forearm braces the carousel and, incidentally, me.
“Whoa,” I gasp. “Buy me a drink first?”
I pull back a notch to get a better look at him and gasp without meaning to. Heck, it was practically mandatory.
Oh my goodness! This man is hotter than a kitchen fire.
Gold-flecked brown eyes meet mine, and just like that, I immediately regret having lungs, because they stop cooperating.
His gaze latches onto mine a moment too long.
His jaw ticks. His lips almost curve into a smile, then he thinks better of it, which somehow makes it worse.
My insides cinch at the sight of him.
He checks off all the tall, dark, and handsome boxes and is built like someone who regularly stands between people and danger.
Judging by the way his shirt strains in all the right places, he has a body built to withstand bullets, and I keep my eyes north out of self-preservation.
And to top it off, about a dozen women in the vicinity are all fanning themselves in his presence.
“This is my bag,” he growls, and I melt into a puddle.
I point at the neon pink flamingo luggage tag dangling from the handle. “I’m pretty sure it’s mine. Unless you also accessorize with plastic birds. Which—no judgment, but if so, soulmate.”
He releases the handle. The suitcasethunk-thunksonto the tile and nearly takes me with it. He steps back, gives me one long, assessing look—the kind people give you right before deciding whether you’re a hurricane or just an annoying light wind—and says, “Figures.”
“Figures what?” I hook my arm through the handle, as if that will keep the suitcase from abandoning me again.
“Figures the first person I run into today would be trouble.”
“I’m not trouble,” I say. “I’m… aggressively accident-prone in a limited range of scenarios.” I stick out my hand before I remember strangers and airports and pandemics, and also personal dignity. “Jinx Julep.”
He eyes my hand, then my face, like he’s cataloging evidence. After a beat, he gives me the most efficient handshake in the history of handshakes. “Koa Hale.”
No title. No small talk. No mercy. He grabs another suitcase that looks suspiciously like mine and peels away toward an employees only door. Of course, there’s a door like that. Of course, he disappears behind it. Of course, my suitcase chooses that moment to lose a wheel.
Welcome to Kauai, Jinx. Please enjoy your stay.
My name is Jinx Julep.I’m thirty-three with auburn hair that laughs at humidity and green eyes that have seen some things. I’m of average height, average shoe size, and yet I’m distinctly above average when it comes to attracting disaster. It’s been my signature move since birth, right alongside a talent for making excellent espresso and spectacularly poor romantic choices.
Case in point, I just spent seven years married to a man who thought “monogamy” was a type of wood furniture, and after catching him with his twenty-three-year-old “executive assistant” in a position that was definitely not in her job description, I decided it was time for a career change. Not in my actual career—I’m a barista, have been sincecollege, and I will probably die with a portafilter in my hand—but a career change in the geographic sense.
Turns out, when your husband downgrades to a newer model, the best revenge isn’t living well. It’s living over three thousand miles away in a place where even his text messages can’t reach you, and his explanations certainly can’t find you. Also, where Ohio’s endless gray skies can’t remind you that you wasted your entire twenties on a man who peaked in college.
Hence, Hawaii. Or what I thought was Maine. The jury is still out on which universe I’m actually in.
The air outside the Lihu?e Airport feels like a deep, warm, humid hug wrapped in jet fuel and the scent of plumeria flowers. I step into it, and just like that, there’s no turning back. An overwhelming feeling hits me immediately—my life just took a hard left and didn’t use the blinker.
